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EA and NVIDIA in Alliance

Posted by michael on from the unholy-pair dept.

Deepak Jois writes "Arstechnica is reporting that EA and NVIDIA have entered into a pact to promote each other. Among other things it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware. Also check this link to the press release."

26 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. ALL platforms? by SixArmedJesus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if they're just talking about hardware platforms, or software as well. Does this mean some good games getting released for Linux?

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    *slight crashing sound*
    1. Re:ALL platforms? by grolim13 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      In my experience, it depends a lot on the card in question; also, some of the more recent Linux drivers are more stable than others.

      I have a Geforce 4MX and a TNT2 on my machine (i.e. dual-head), and ran the Geforce4 with the NVIDIA closed-source binary drivers and the TNT2 with the XFree drivers. Why? Because the system locks hard every few hours with the NVIDIA drivers for the TNT2. Interestingly, it has exactly the same symptoms in Win2K - if I hadn't been using Linux on the same system, I would probably be blaming Microsoft for NVIDIA's buggy drivers.

      On the other hand, getting the NVIDIA drivers to work at all is a pain. In fact, getting working drivers for any hardware that isn't supported by the stock kernel is a pain.

  2. Here's a good idea... by swordboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    nVidia should write a proprietary API for their video chips. And then they could pay EA to release hardware specific products...

    I think that "Glide" would be a good name for this API.

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    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
    1. Re:Here's a good idea... by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 2, Informative

      Cg is not an API, it is a programming language. It compiles to Direct3D and OpenGl. As for proprietary GL extensions, ATi has EXT_VERTEX_SHADER and ATI_FRAGMENT_SHADER.

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      Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
  3. EA's games have been crap lately by vasqzr · · Score: 2, Funny


    I remember them, back in the days of "NHLPA Hockey", "John Madden Football", and "Bulls vs Blazers", they were the creators of the BEST sports games on Nintendo/Sega.

    Seems like they stopped working on the game quality somewhere about 1999, and now are just concerned with shoving as much FMV, dumb features, and gimmicks in to their games. Not to mention the games are pretty buggy, the AI is horrible...

    1. Re:EA's games have been crap lately by Locky · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd hardly consider Medal of Honor, Battlefield 1942, SimCity 4, C&C Generals to be filled with dumb features, gimmicks and FMV.

      I know that The Sims is the root of all evil, but EA do publish some very high quality games.

    2. Re:EA's games have been crap lately by Nitar · · Score: 4, Informative

      Battlefield 1942 and C&C Generals are exceptions to the EA rule. EA loves to crank out sports titles with little more to offer than the previous years release, besides updated stats.

      Also, the customer support at EA just plain sucks. I can't think of a game since Anarchy Online where the support sucked as bad as it does for C&C Generals. Don't get me wrong, though. I think Generals is an excellent game, and I have been playing it quite a bit... now that I actually have it working. However, there are a lot of people who can't install the game, or it crashes to the desktop consistently, or it freezes up all the time. The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.

      There is absolutely no useful input from EA to help people out with this problem. They give you links to benchmarking, and system stability testing software. If all of these utilities prove your system is indeed stable, EA basically ignores you, and the problem.

      Anyhow, I could care less about this union. I doubt EA will stop supporting ATI cards, so Nvidias major competitor will still keep going strong. I personally think that Nvidia is just trying to raise the perceived value of their gfx cards, since the actual performance of the cards is lower than the latest ATI cards.

      -Nitar

    3. Re:EA's games have been crap lately by pmz · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.

      This is EA's first mistake. How are they supposed to do tech support, when the customers can say only that a "serious error" occurred. Internet Explorer is just as bad when pages don't load. How are end-users supposed to learn anything when the programmers give up on reporting useful error information?

      --
      Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
    4. Re:EA's games have been crap lately by pmz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ha. Gripe to the human-interface people who get up on their soapbox and beat their drums to the tune of "nobody wants to see that debugging junk, its enough to know their program crashed. It shouldn't have crashed in the first place, so its the programmers fault that it happened."

      So, the suits fall for the UI argument, and, then, follow-up by not increasing funding so the programmers can't write robust code. This makes me question whether EA would ever be a good place to work as a programmer.

      To anyone who says, "programmers should write robust code by default", I say, "get a real job." To anyone who says "use Lisp or Python (or whatever) and all your woes magically disappear", I say, "no programming language yet invented fundamentally reduces the complexity of programming, even Lisp can break when lists take on nil values unexpectedly--you just don't get a core dump from it".

      --
      Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
  4. NVidia got itself a good deal by markpapadakis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EA is, no doubt, the leader in the computer games industry. NVidia is into a head 2 head fight with ATI ( ATI is probably going to come out as the winner ), and such a deal will add points in its favor in this 'fight'. Imagine a series of games to comes with a 'NVidia' recommented stamp on the cover.

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    1. Re:NVidia got itself a good deal by Apreche · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wouldn't be too sure that ATI will come out as the winner. It's not like in the Voodoo days where the Voodoo 3 came out and was total crap compared to the TNT2, thus giving Nvidia the huge advantage. ATI vs. NVidia is much more involved and uncertain.

      Despite the uncertainties, I predict a role reversal. ATI was always the card that came in Dells and Gateways and such. It was the video card that was good enough to play games, but not good enough for the l33t. ATI made their money by having their video card built into pre-built machines. People learned about ATI through their system tray. NVidia was the card for l33t gamers. You used to not be able to get a computer with an NVidia card in it. What's happening is ATI is becoming the L33t gamers card while NVidia is becoming the thing for the average user. But NVidia also makes the ridiculously expensive card for the millionaire gamer. ATI, with the technologically better Radeon is moved into the smaller market.

      Don't believe it? Look at NForce. It's a beautiful thing. It allows for technologies gamers want like dual AGP bandwith to the RAM and AMD processors. While at the same time you can get one that has integrated GeForce4 Video, sound, and ethernet to save the average user money. The best of both worlds. If NVidia was just trying to take the gamers market why would they make a chipset with integrated video?

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    2. Re:NVidia got itself a good deal by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 3, Informative

      13(?) micrometer technology
      It is actually 0.13.

      nVidia is not ahead of ATi at all. nVidia and ATi both manufacture their chips at TSMC. The supposed reason that it took nVidia so long with the FX was that TSMC was having trouble with the 0.13 micron process. Not that they ironed out all the problems, there is no reason they can't manufacture ATi's chips using the same process.

      In fact, considering that nVidia's 0.13 micron card runs hotter and slower than nVidia's previous generation 0.18 micron card (I'm not even talking about the 9800 here) really shows that nVidia is really behind this round.

      --
      Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
    3. Re:NVidia got itself a good deal by Pulzar · · Score: 3, Informative

      True, at the moment ATI is in the lead, but keep in mind that nVidia has now changed over to 13(?) micrometer technology.

      Radeon 9600 is also made using 0.13u process. The whole "switch to 0.13" has been overplayed, since neither nVidia nor ATI actually develop the process itself, as they don't produce any of their chips.

      The only thing that they have to do is start using new libraries when creating their chips, and altough that's not a simple thing, it's also not something revolutionary -- both companies do it almost once every year.

      --
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    4. Re:NVidia got itself a good deal by ergo98 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, unfettered market dominance.

      Revisionist history. 3dfx acquired market dominance through superior engineer, and they then lost it when they became business oriented rather than technically oriented. The cross-promotion venture came at a time when everyone was questioning what 3dfx was doing, was question the usefulness of Glide, and generally the anti-3dfx movement had begun. Here's a hilarious thread one usenet that I could look up because I remember having that conversation some 5 years ago (I'm one of the participants in the thread), and it hilariously is an agreement at the time between EA and 3dfx. How ironic.

  5. This reminds me... by Quass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Read this this-morning on CNet avantgo...
    Anyone remember those 3dfx emblazened boxes about 5 years ago? First they get they're own graphics language (reminds me of Glide), and now they start working with companies to program for the chips they make?? For some reason I think Nvidia is being just a BIT too influenced from 3dfx.. it's like they're repeating all the mistakes!

    "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played" ... pfft.. yeah, the cards are good, but honestly!

    1. Re:This reminds me... by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cg ("Their own graphics language") is a programming language.
      Glide was an API.
      Cg compiles to OpenGL or Direct3D, and it could very well be used on ATi cards with slight modifications. The two are nothing alike.

      --
      Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
  6. Wait a... by Martigan80 · · Score: 3, Funny

    By exclusively adopting NVIDIA hardware for their worldwide studios, EA is escalating the creative palette of its 3D artists and programmers

    I thought a palette was a piece of wood or something that had a range of colors, so how can a creative palette be obtained from using only one gfx card?

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  7. The cycle never ends.. by phuturephunk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ..It impresses me how quickly the davids of the past become the goliaths of the present..Seems like a trend with geekdom, cause, at least in part to the merciless social beatings we got while growing up for being the way we are..Microsoft Vs. Ibm...3dfx Vs. Nvidia and now Nvidia vs. everyone else. One can only hope one day, if and when Linux truly becomes a dominant desktop operating system, that someone has the perception to learn from the past and not doom us to repeat it.

  8. Does this mean.... by Dutchmaan · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...that EA's new slogan will be "Challenge Everything... except nVidia"

  9. creepy by IAR80 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I allways found that kind of alliances creepy. This kind of thing never promotes value. The end of all this will be that all EA games will work verry bad with ATI boards and non EA games will be less competitive on Nvidia. Finally the end user will end up screwed.

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  10. yes, at last. by mfh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not like this every happened with...

    Sony
    Nintendo
    Philips
    Sega
    Atari
    EA
    Akklai m
    3dfx
    id Software

    I could go on, but I don't feel like searching Google right now.

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
  11. Scissors + Standards Documents... by Jerk+City+Troll · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I guess this means we're going to see a flood of games that either require an NVIDIA accellerator or "highly recommend" one (read: "this game will look like shit on ATI").

    Nah, it'll never happen. They'll stick to OpenGL, I'm sure of it!

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  12. Re: The point. by BabyDave · · Score: 4, Funny
    After having a horrible experience trying to get a darn kernel driver working with an Nvidia card (which has been sitting in a box for a year now) I'm now exclusively ATI.

    Try taking the card out of the box and plugging it into the PC.

    HTH

  13. Stopped Buying EA Games years ago by zcollier · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how many of us will be completely unaffected by this?

    I vowed never to buy another Electronic Arts game years ago, after they decided that Ultima Online and its patrons deserved to be handled in a cynically condescending and ham-fisted manner. I will never forgive EA for having me pay to play a beta, their game not even living up to the feature set printed on the box.

    From what I hear, their customer support has only gotten worse, not better, as they farm support out internationally, while making it even more difficult to email or call in for support (by not providing such information), let alone overcoming potential language barriers.

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  14. This is nothing - only a bundling deal by Torgo's+Pizza · · Score: 4, Informative
    There's already been discussion on this since yesterday on [H]ardforums. Too many people are reading the press release and thinking the graphics world is coming to an end. This is only a deal to get EA games bundled with Nvidia cards. That's it.

    First off, let's look at some parts of the press statement. Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA.O and video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS.O said on Thursday they would collaborate to market and develop new games. No biggie here. ATI does the same thing. Actually, in truth the way this works is EA will say to one of their development houses under contract, "Hey, we've got this Nvidia guy we'd like you to talk to, to help you implement some new features."

    Under the terms of the deal, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred" graphics platform for Electronic Arts's video game studios, and video games developed by Electronic Arts may offer features designed to work on Nvidia hardware. Note the quotes around "preferred" and the added emphasis (mine) on may. Note that this is all fuzzy and hazy on exactly what is going to be done. The terms "exclusive" isn't used. Fact is, the developers who actually make the games aren't going to cut off their nose to despite their face. Neither is the publisher.

    Nvidia also said it will have exclusive rights to bundle Electronic Arts's games for personal computers with its products. Ah ha! This is what this whole thing is about. The best way to sell a game is to bundle it. The publisher makes a guarenteed sale and lowers his cost of production (no boxes to make, no instructions to print) as well. Best of all, a bundle is usually a guarenteed sale. Nvidia has already bought the game if they sell the video card or not and EA counts it in their books. The only thing that ATI users won't get is a EA game when they buy a new card. No big deal since ATI can lower the price of their card because they don't include a software bundle, or they could go to some other publisher.

    Finally, for all those bitching and whining about this you've already been suckered into this for years and years. Bundling agreements have been around and we all have bought products that have them. You buy joysticks and dohickeys because they have video game support and drivers built in. They come with bundles as well. I've bought plenty of video cards with bundles. Most computers come with bundles. All of them involve agreements like Nvidia and EA and press releases.

    What is this really? In exchange for technical expertise, the developer gets a free resource to implement some advanced features (which we probably won't use anyway) in return for some games in a video card box. Big whoop. There's just been too much FUD about this. It's not like DoomNukem IX only going to work on a Nvidia card. There's no conspiracy. There's no little green men trying to take away your ATI card. There's no men in black trying to limit your free choice.

    It's a bundling agreement. That's it. Now go back to your homes. There's nothing to see here.

  15. Unbelievable by j4ck50n · · Score: 4, Informative
    All the support I see here for EA...

    And they differ from MS how?

    They seem to be buying all the smaller studios and then either cancelling or crippling the games in development. Did they or did they not just buy the company working on the RTCW expansion and cancel it among others?

    Support...please.

    This collaboration will either:

    A) Suck

    B) Go nowhere

    C) Backfire

    Yea yea, they 'own' sports titles and have made a few decent driving games, but they also churn out a lot of buggy crap. BF1942 is not all that, C&C Gen is shallow as all hell. Etc etc.

    We'll see.